Behind the story

When I first adopted the design team at italki, there was a major update of the products. Lots of things had been changed, but there was a lack of documentation of the changes.

To help myself better understand the history, I initiated “Project Loki”, to put together all the “hidden gems” from the legacy products. To understand why some features got abandoned and what were their impacts. It was not very easy to get everything on track, but at least we got something.

Plan for the future

After that, I started to think about how can we keep a better record of all the design efforts we are making every day. After all, we are human, we forget things.

Moving to Figma was one simple action to take (so that everything is stored in the cloud with version control). Better design documentations on Confluence was another. But those things are basic and sometimes boring.

To make it a fun experience, and to get the team more engaged about it, I started to plan for writing a book.

We tried a few different printing software, but eventually we still settle down with Figma. We created a 250 x 210 mm page template with grids and margins, then our designers could start to put their works into the templates every once in a while.

The book

Two years later, we’ve got enough content to tell a good story.

Everything you did, matters

Nothing was really simple to achieve. At certain times, I almost gave up on finishing the book. Sometimes I felt that it didn’t worth the effort. Until one day I got inspired by someone else quoting what I said to her earlier:

“Everything you did matters, you said that.”

Yes, everything you did, matters. Sometimes things could really get tough, but at the end of the day, everything will payoff when you witness the impacts that you have made.

I was quite happy to eventually hold the book in my hand. It was not perfect, but it records all the hard work that we worked together as a team, and that’s all it matters.